


A Fortuitous Intervention

by tielan



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Baby-Sitters Club - Ann M. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-08 01:31:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12244512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: In a moment of pique, Diana Barry wished someone –anyone– would take Minnie May away.





	A Fortuitous Intervention

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Missy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/gifts).



> This was a bit tricky; I was trying for something a bit more mythological but it got about 3/4 of the way through and didn't quite work out. I hope this is okay for you instead!

In a moment of pique, Diana Barry wished someone – _anyone_ – would take Minnie May away.

Her little sister had been whining all evening while her mother and father were down at the town meeting, and Diana hadn’t had a moment of peace. She was still angry with her mother for believing the worst about Anne and the currant wine, and not allowing her best friend to see her or even speak to her.

And now Minnie May was fretting, wailing every time Diana left the room, and Diana was  _tired_ and didn’t have any patience for her baby sister as she tried to put her down for the umpteenth time. At first it seemed like Minnie May might do as she was told. Diana held her breath and headed for the top of the stairs. Then a plaintive cry rose up.

“Minnie May...” Diana’s shoulders slumped, and she threw up her hands. “Oh, can’t you just be quiet and sleep for once?”

The crying took on a mocking edge, or so it seemed to the beleaguered girl.

“I just want some peace! I wish someone would take you away and look after you so I didn’t have to!”

Abruptly, the crying ceased, and Diana breathed a sigh of relief as silence fell on the house.

Too much peace and silence, given that even Minnie May’s ‘quiet’ usually held a whimper or two to mark her settling down.

Diana hurried back along the corridor, swung in the door of Minnie May’s room and realised the cot was s empty, her sister nowhere to be seen. The hair on the back of Diana’s neck prickled, and she rushed down the stairs to throw open the front door.

There was a cat sitting on the path to the gate.

This was not unusual – there were several cats on the Barry farm. However, Diana had never before seen an orange tabby with purple markings. She was quite sure they were purple – they almost glowed in the moonlight.

“Don’t stare,” said the cat. And it yawned and twitched its whiskers. “Didn’t your mother teach you anything about politeness?”

At first Diana couldn’t think. A cat, talking? Even in Anne’s wildest stories of the Lake Of Shining Waters and beautiful ladies and lords animals had just been animals.

“What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”

Diana gathered up her courage. “My...My mother taught me many things. Just...not about talking cats.”

The cat stuck out its front paws and stretched, first its back, then its front. “Maybe I’m not talking,” he said. (It sounded like a ‘he’ anyway.) “Maybe this is all in your imagination.”

“I wish it was,” said Diana fervently. “Oh, how I wish it was! But I don’t have any imagination – not like Anne. Oh, how I wish Anne was here!” Anne would know what to do – would take a talking cat in her stride, along with the missing Minnie May...

“Hm, Anne...” the cat settled itself and stuck out a leg, starting to clean it, just as any farm cat would. Between licks, it noted, “Ah, yes, the girl at Green Gables. Fascinating, that one. Plenty of scope. Good head on her shoulders, too.”

“Please, sir,” Diana ventured, her mind awhirl with possibilities and confusion, but remembering her mother’s injunction to always be polite, even if she didn’t know what was going on. “Do you...Do you know what’s happened to my sister?”

The cat was busy picking between its claws. It paused, then looked at Diana. “At a guess, I’d say you wished for someone to take your sister and look after her, and the night took you at your word.”

“Oh, but I never meant to...” Diana scrunched her hands in her skirts. “Minnie May was annoying me, and I couldn’t—I didn’t want her  _ gone, _ I just wished her to stop crying!”

“I’m guessing your mother never told you how unwise it is to wish things like that. Especially on nights when the moon is full and the wind is high.”

“N...No. I don’t think she knew.” Diana thought of her mother and father, out at the town meeting, and trembled. “What...what am I going to do? Wait, where are you going?”

For the cat had shook itself all over and was padding softly off into the grassy yard towards the path that led out to the barn, it’s tail flicking jauntily in the air.

“I’m off to catch some mice. You’d do as well to be off to find your sister...”

“But where should I even start?”

“There’s always  _ that  _ way,” said the cat, its tail flicking right, out towards the farm fields. “Or  _ that _ way.” It flicked its tail to the left and the woods. “Or, sometimes you might like to consider going  _ both ways _ ...”

Diana stared at the twirling tip of the cat’s tail. She could have sworn it was getting fainter, that she could see her mother’s flower garden through the tip. “But how can I go both ways?”

“I don’t know. How  _ can _ you go both ways?”

“You just said—” She broke off, for the cat was barely an outline, and even as she watched it vanished entirely from sight and was nowhere to be seen. “Wait!”

“Follow the yellow brick road!”

It was the cat’s voice, only without the cat. Diana stared through the moonlight, looking for where the cat could have hidden. 

“I beg your pardon?”

“Follow the yellow brick road!” The cat’s voice was clear enough, even if it had vanished. “And you’ll maybe find your sister!”

_ Follow the yellow brick road? _ Diana thought, unwilling to converse with empty space. What had the cat meant? And how had it disappeared? Was she dreaming?

If she was dreaming, then Minnie May would be in her bed – probably wailing, but Diana would live with it. She rushed back inside and up the stairs, calling Minnie May’s name, and swung in the door of the nursery—

No Minnie May.

Despondent, it took Diana a moment to hear the voices outside.

“Kristy, are you sure about this?”

“No, I’m not sure, Claudia. But considering we’re standing on a yellow brick road,  _ and  _ we snatched the kid from the wind,  _ and  _ this is the first house we’ve come across,  _ and  _ it has an open front door, I’m guessing that there’s a pretty good chance she came from here... Hello? Anyone home?”

Diana clattered down the stairs. “Minnie May!” She gathered the little girl from the arms of the nearest girl at the door. “Oh, thank you for finding her! She was...I don’t know what happened or how she got away, but I was terrified...”

She trailed off as she took a good look at her benefactors.

They were girls perhaps her own age, but dressed...strangely. One was wearing trousers and a slightly puffy jacket that didn’t look like wool or sheepskin. She looked like she was Diana’s age, but the way she held herself made Diana feel very young. And the other...

The second was wearing a dress, but it was so short that it didn’t come anywhere near her knees. If it had come from the poorbox, then they’d obviously gotten a child’s size for it was far too short – and it looked too nice to have come from the poorbox. Beneath the dress – well, it was really a tunic – she was wearing stockings. Really nice-looking, brightly-patterned stockings, unlike anything Diana had ever seen before. And she looked...different. Her face was slightly flatter and her eyes tilted at the corners. 

“We were taking a shortcut back to Bradford Court, when we saw her,” she said, pushing the long dark swing of her hair back behind her ear. “And this is going to sound  _ so  _ weird, but, um, she was being carried along by the wind.”

“Like, feet off the ground, blowing along in the air.”

“And when we grabbed her, the wind tried to get her back, which was just plain freaky.”

“Although not as freaky as finding ourselves on an actual yellow brick road,” said the first one. “Like I don’t think we’re in Connecticut anymore, Claudia!”

Diana jiggled Minnie May in her arms, and grasped onto one of the few things that make sense. “The disappearing cat said I should follow the yellow brick road. But there are no yellow brick roads around here.”

“Well, I didn’t know there were any in Stoneybrook,” said the second girl who’d been addressed as Claudia’.”

“Stoneybrook?” Diana frowned, suddenly remembering the comment about Connecticut. “Where’s that? This is Avonlea, Prince Edward Island.”

“Prince Edward Island,  _ Canada? _ ”

“I don’t know of any other Prince Edward Islands.”

“Oh,  _ man _ ,” said Claudia, her eyes wide. “We  _ really  _ aren’t in Connecticut anymore! Kristy?”

“We’d better go home,” Kristy gave the road running by the house an anxious look. “Or at least try to get there...”

“Thank you for bringing Minnie May back.” Diana jiggled the baby in her arms. Her sister had finally settled down, and was sucking quietly on her hand. “I...I don’t know what happened to her. Or to you. But I hope you get home all right.”

“We’ll follow the yellow brick road, I guess.”

Kristy looked at Claudia who shrugged and leaned in to tap Minnie May on the nose. “Bye, sweetie It was lovely to babysit you!”

“‘Baby-sit’?” Diana asked.

“Looking after her,” Kirsty said. “Like...minding a child. What you’re doing. Only we do it for other people, not our sisters. Well, sometime for our sisters. But mostly we’re paid to do it for other people.”

“Now isn’t the time for advertising, Kristy – when are we even going to be up here again? Especially if it’s  _ Canada _ !”

“You never know!”

Claudia rolled her eyes. “We have to go, we’re supposed to be on the way home, and we don’t even know if the yellow brick road will take us back where we came from... If it doesn’t, then we are going to be in  _ so  _ much trouble...”

The prospect didn’t seem to worry Kristy too much. “It’ll take us back,” she said confidently.

“Thank you,” Diana said again as the girls started down the path towards the road. One could never say ‘thank you’ too often; particularly when these girls had saved Minnie May from...what? The wind? Wherever the mysterious yellow brick road went?

She watched the two of them walk out onto the road – and it did look oddly yellow-coloured in the moonlight – and up and over the small rise that led down to the main road into town. Then she went inside and closed the door quietly.

Minnie May was finally looking drowsy, and Diana tiptoed up the stairs to the nursery, hoping to be able to put Minnie May down and maybe have a moment or two to herself. However the instant she tried to put her sister in the crib, the baby wailed.

“Oh, Minnie May!” Diana sighed. “All right,” she conceded, tiredly. “You can come and sit with me...”

When her parents came home some time later, they found both girls asleep on the bed, Minnie May cradled in the curve of Diana’s arm.


End file.
